"What do you think?"Kenji asked.
Jin was quiet for a long moment, thinking about the woman in velvet with her plant-lions and her bread trees and her impossible garden.Living alone on cursed land.Surviving where no one else had.Blushing over silk undergarments while surrounded by creatures that had killed monsters to protect her.
"I think," he said slowly, "things are about to get very complicated."
Kenji groaned again."Viktor's going to lose his mind when he hears about this."
That was true.Viktor had been eyeing that property for years.And now someone was not only living there, but thriving.With magic he'd never seen before.
"Let's report to the council first," Jin said."Before the rumors get too wild."
"Too late for that.The squirrels already know."
Also true.
They rode in silence for a while, the bread warm in Jin's saddlebag, the memory of Wren's embarrassed face and Kenji's horror vivid in his mind.
Complicated didn't even begin to cover it.
Horse Chestnut
––––––––
SHE STOOD THERE FORa long moment after they left, watching them disappear down the road.
Then she covered her face with her hands.
"He grabbed underwear from my underwear tree," she said to no one in particular.
Walter chittered sympathetically from his branch."Could have been worse, madam."
"How?How could it have been worse?"
"He could have grabbed a nightgown and tried to wear it as a cape?"
Despite everything, she laughed.It came out slightly hysterical, but it was a laugh.
